This is a picture of my new/old desk in my studio.  Before I was only using the main one attached to the wall.  And that was the problem, I was facing a wall.

Often I would go into this room to work and come out an hour later having been completely unproductive, feeling thoroughly dissatisfied and depressed and not knowing why.  I put it down to various factors, some of which I’m still struggling with but I knew there was something more fundamental at the bottom of it and that it was solvable. I just didn’t know what it was. So I gave it time to breathe, to percolate, to exist, though it disturbed me.

Realisation dawned one day in the form of an idea to recoup the old desk (that I had chucked when we finished the room). I had resisted this idea because I was willing to sacrifice flow for aesthetics.  For me things need to be functional as well as beautiful, pleasing to the eye and in the beginning that desk just wasn’t doing it for me.  But the fact remained that I wasn’t creating.  I was constantly hitting a “wall”.

The fact is I love having a lot of empty space on my desk. I realise now I needed space to breathe, to imagine, to create. Now, you can find perfume ingredients jammed up against photography equipment and writing tools all working together to create a beautiful trinity of harmonious creative energy that is uniquely mine.

Creating one’s space takes time, at the heart of which lies the art of listening.